I am reasonably new to the SDMB - spent my time in GQ, moved over to Cafe Society, still lurking in MPSIMS and GD, but this is already a place I have gotten pretty comfortable with. I have read most of this 3 page thread - I think - and am wondering if a fund-raiser approach would work? Once or twice a year make a call for donations - set a goal and help us understand that goal. I would definitely contribute more than my fair share - I can afford it compared to others and would be happy to do so. Others who can’t or won’t simple don’t. It would be like NPR or PBS.
True the fund drives can be excrutiating, but it would keep the SDMB open - assuming we could generate adequate funding…
I am not a web surfer by any means - but are there examples of this type of approach and has it worked and if so for what types of sites???
KellyM Thanks for the insight. Just for the record, jdavis had this to say about the bandwidth
It looks like, at peak capacity, we’re talking almost 1 full T1. The only disagreement you would get from me in your estimate is on the labor side. 1 Full Time Equivalent seems like an awful lot to run the board, especially if the administration and moderating is volunteer. I’m no expert in these matters, but I do have a bit of knowledge, since my job is pricing IT services, that estimate seems high.
Either way, we are really just speculating. It’s a very interesting problem from a pricing perspective. In some ways it is very similar to some of the pricing issues for my company. We have a service partly based in fixed assets, partly in variable costs such as network and labor, that can be sold multiple times over. If we make the wrong assumption about our sales estimates, we can screw up the pricing royally.
For instance, we know that a limited number of subscribers will choose to pay. That number will vary depending on the price. As Chronos pointed out, we will lose many of our current members by charging the first cent. If we charge $5, I believe that a large number will choose to stay. At $10, we will lose some more, but perhaps not that many. When you hit $20, you’re probably losing many more, IMHO, damaging the board’s integrity. At >$20, I think you immediately lose most everyone, and those that are left will not have the same SDMB that they know and love.
On top of it all is that if the membership falls, so do the system requirements. If you base your price on needing $15,000 and assume you will get 500 members paying, that’s $30 each. But, with only 500 members, do you need the $15,000 system? I think not. There are a lot of gives and takes, if they choose correctly, we will continue to have a vibrant, interesting community, and their costs will be covered with room to spare. If they choose incorrectly, they will either continue to bleed cash, or will initiate a downward spiral of mediocrity for the board.
I personally think that the lowball approach is most appropriate for the circumstances. Price too high, and the board will most certainly be ruined, perhaps with no chance of recovery. Price too low, and you will offset a great deal of the cost that you are currently spending, and have the option of raising the price a bit in the future to acheive 100% cost recovery.
This is a very interesting problem, indeed, I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
I’d personally recommend something like WorldCom’s Burstable T1, which costs considerably less than a full-cap T1. You can probably get a burstable T1 for around $400 a month if you shop carefully.
To be honest, I padded that estimate. It’s probably closer to 0.4-0.6 FTE.
Now is a good time to buy hardware, btw. The dot-bomb has resulted in a glut of good hardware on the used equipment market. There’s server hardware out there for as little as 20 cents on the dollar. I suspect that, with some effort, we could throw together a highly servicable engine (probably actually one better than what the Boards currently have) for under $5000. The two largest costs are always going to be bandwidth and labor.
Great numbers, KellyM. I’d imagine there’s a cost related to the administration and processing of subscriptions that also needs to be built in…anything else ?
To my mind, the other variables on this question are:
How PTP will affect page views, or the boards popularity if you will – if the board loses members, one has to assume many of them will drift away rather than lurk. But then the board has doubled in size the past year or so…how about keeping to the million a month for these purposes to build in a little expansion ?
There remains the issue of hardware and maintenance - are we really looking at new kit ?
However, both cheesestake and KellyM seem to be of a similar mind on the T1 - 40% of a T1 at peak could well average out at 25% over 24/7, so what I recall Tuba mentioning seems to fit with davies’ comment. Maybe we’re on the right track with Bandwidth.
Thinking ahead…when there are no others views on Bandwidth and other costs, I guess we’d put those costs together with kabbes’ sample of 394 (nicely spread) members. I hope he’s not going to think me obtuse, but I want to think again about how to look at those numbers overnight – hopefully, he’ll be around in the morning to disabuse me/us of any erroneous considerations…any hardcore statisticians out there ?
Once we settle on a range of likely currently active members (is an average of 1+ posts a day a reasonable line to draw and from which to assume almost all subscribers will come – higher, lower ?), I’d imagine we then move into modelling along the lines of Green Beans inelastic $20.
I have to say, I think Ed Zotti, Tuba and the team have a hell of a conundrum to resolve here…I’m sure they’re grateful for our observations :eek:
Running our message board software, let me interject a few comments:
Our message board has approximately 25,000 registered users, with about 400 concurrent users at peak. When we implemented subscriptions, we had a $5 option and a $40 option. Over approximately 8 months, I think we’ve made a grand total of $3000. Something like 10% of the top few hundred posters registered. I’d expect less with a one size fits all charge of $50.
Honestly, if the SDMB implements a $50 charge to post on all boards, I predict the following:
Day 1: Traffic unchanged. Number of posts for the day drops to approximately 1% of current.
Day 5: Traffic approximately 25-30% of current, number of posts per day at 2-3% of current.
Day 30: Traffic approximately 5% of current, number of posts per day at 2-3% of current.
My reasoning is simple- if you charge people to post, your board dies a quick death. The first few days, lurkers continue to return. Finding nothing new, many never return. Certainly, few to none register.
Even if 20-30% of current posters that post 1+ times per day join, there will be a “post drought” during the first week because of lag time for people to register.
The number of posts won’t drop just because there aren’t enough people to post- people who normally WOULD post will not because they have nothing to post ABOUT- no newbies asking questions or starting debates. You’ll get spirited debating between some members for awhile, but overall, both the number of posts and more importantly the AMOUNT of Useful information on the straight dope will decline precipitously.
I will be sorry to see this message board go. I will not pay for this site.
If they start making people pay it is the end of this message board. This board is only interesting because of the people here. I will be greatly surprised if even 10% of active posters pay. That will make this board almost totally worthless.
As far as I know, the Official Straight Dope Message Board has never been on usenet. Yes, there’s been alt.fan.cecil-adams, and there’s been the SDMB on AOL, but it’s never officially been on usenet, with Cecil’s Column and the Staff Reports.
I used to love usenet/newsgroups, but there’s just too much spam for me out there.
Take a nice deep breath and calm down a second, please.
You’ve been operating under a ton of misconceptions here. I’ll try to correct some of them.
We have never said that the Reader was making a business of this, just the opposite, in fact: this site has been a placeholder for them while they figured out how to be in cyberspace. They’ve made no secret of the fact that this is not their area of expertise, it’s not their meat, it’s not like what they do know, which is the alternative paper biz.
What we have been for them is goodwill . . . and an expense . . . nothing more.
It’s NOT free to run it . . . it’s just been free for you to USE it. Big difference.
It’s not unfair for the Reader to at least expect some reasonable return for the investment they have made. And certainly if there’s any expectation of improved service, which would take upgrades in hardware and software to implement, well, that kind of bux don’t drop from the sky. Where do you propose that sort of thing come from, if not from subscription sales?
As Ed pointed out already, advertising revenue is nearly nonexistent.
While I cannot speak for the Reader and wouldn’t presume to, I can tell you with fairly good authority that this is not something they’ve hired consultants for. The Reader is a very small company, this ain’t the New York Times, it’s a little pitzer weekly alternative newspaper. In fact, what they’ve done is very small in scope and most commonsensical: they went to the people that use this site and asked you for your opinion.
BTW, why does everybody keep throwing out “$50 a year!” No fee has yet been fixed and a discount for current users was mentioned practically in the same breath, whatever the fee might be.
So calm down, go give your opinion on the survey page, and relax, okay?
We have a problem. We’re asking the Admins for help. We’re asking the Mods for help. And plenty of Dopers are trying to solve things on their own.
BUT, we’ve all overlooked the obvious. Who do we all know who can solve any problem and answer any question?
We, the Teeming Millions, must turn to Unca Cecil in this time of crisis. Cec, what is the solution to our troubles? I pray thee, give me the Straight Dope!
PS I also like the proposed idea of pimping Cecil. But if impregnation is the goal, a bank of Cecil’s sperm would be more efficient. Think of it -
“The Cecil Adams Sperm Bank-Step Right Up For Your Vial Of His Teeming Millions!”
I haven’t heard a single person on this board claim that the Reader doesn’t deserve to make money off this site. They’ve put enough into it, God knows; they should recoup their costs, get enough for maintenance, and as far as I’m concerned, make enough to have the admins and mods retire from their day jobs and just run the place from cabanas in the Philippines. Go right for it; this place is amazing, and I have no problem with the people responsible making some money from it.
What people are saying is that pay-to-post is the wrong way to go about it. People are posting examples of boards it has killed; people are suggesting ways that it can be avoided. Financial consultants are offering their services, free of charge. What you’re seeing here is concern for the future of the board.
This site has thousands of viewers, thousands of posters; it’s a vibrant community of intelligent, generous, and loyal people, all more than willing to help out the board in any way we can, as long as it will keep the board alive*.
There is credible testimony in several threads now that indicates that this scheme will result in the slow death of this board. No-one here wants that. What we want is to find a way to make sure that the boards turn a profit, and stick around. While the p-t-p scheme will probably generate a revenue stream for a while, it will dwindle to nothing as people go elsewhere, for free.
I seriously beg to differ with that one. What they did was announce a pre-registration for a subscription. The page the survey is on indicates that the only possible options are continuing as is, shut down the site, or charge for posting privileges. Then it goes on to explain why this is a necessary step. What would have been reasonable, commonsensical, is to tap into the resource at your disposal; ask the Teeming Millions how they would keep the board alive. As you’re finding out, there are a lot of suggestions, and a lot of offers for help coming in; it would have been a lot easier to pull together the community in support of the boards had this whole thing not started with what reads like it’s a done deal.
The outrage you see on the boards is not at the Reader trying to turn a profit; that’s fine. Admirable, even. The outrage is at the fact that, while other methods exist, the first one being attempted is the one least likely to work, and most likely to kill off the board.
SDMB needs to go to a donation type method of raising funds. I will donate but I will not subscribe because I think the board will die if you people need to subscribe.
Goats.com does this they have a little pledge drive meter and seem to get around $600 a month or so. What is the amount SDMB needs to raise?
Flat out charging for posting rights will deter people from posting content to the board. If nobody is posting nobody will read and the board will die.
